Page 59 of A Fae in Finance
“Do you use the greeting if you are challenging the human to mortal combat?”
My eyes met the Princeling’s. He inclined his head, indicating I should answer.
Sahir had been completely right: Greetings filled the entire two hours, and then two more class sessions after that. Ifthiswas all the Princeling required, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The next two weeks blurred. I skipped breakfast, rolling out of bed bleary-eyed to be on the morning call. Lene lay on my bed and kept me quiet company, sometimes with Gaheris, and sometimes alone.
At lunch and dinner, I prioritized dessert and never finished my food, afraid to be away from the desk in case an email came in. I was sick a few more times, probably from stress, though never as badly as the first night. Maybe a faerie hadn’t poisoned me after all. Maybe it’d been psychosomatic.
At some time between midnight and two a.m., I rolled back into bed, asleep before Doctor Kitten could even curl into my side. Once I dreamed of Thea and Jordan, sitting together on Thea’s blue couch.
“Have you seen Miri since that dinner we had together?” Jordan asked.
“No,” Thea said, holding a glass beer bottle to her chest, her brow furrowed. “I think she might be mad at us for what we said about her job.”
I shot bolt upright, scrambling for my phone, and it took me several seconds to understand it had only been a dream.
I dreamed of my mother once, clutching her pillow and crying out for me. In the morning, my dad called and told me she’d woken him in the night with questions about me.
“Weird,” I said. “Maybe she’s also a Lady of the True Dreams.”
The title had begun to amuse me: I dreamed of stew for lunch and then laughed when a cafeteria worker plopped a bowl of stew onto my lunch tray. Three nights in a row, my dreams accurately predicted the type of cake Milo would serve me the next day. True dreams, indeed.
And every day, my mom called to ask if I’d taught human class, and if I was fulfilling the terms of my bargain.
One night, I told the Games Games Games group chat that I probably wouldn’t be playing with them for the foreseeable future. I had too much work to do.
I received and ignored a barrage of phone calls in response. Jordan sent me a series of Venmo payments labeledEmergency CheeseandComfort Bagels.
I called Thea, and she told me a very involved story about a coworker’s misadventures while purchasing donut-themed socks. I cried until I laughed.
Every day that passed, it became harder to tell my friends that I wouldn’t ever see them again. So every day that passed, I didn’t.
Chapter 10
In Which I Am Forbidden from Eating Toast
One night, Sahir knocked on my door still in his suit, his laptop under his arm. When I called, “Who is it?” he opened the door and entered.
“Hi, Sahir,” I said, leaning back in the desk chair. “How are you?”
Sahir hated human greetings more than anyone else in the class, probably because he was the only one who actually had to use them regularly.
He looked around, frowning. “Are you working?”
I gestured to my computer screen, where an Excel model was running through twenty-four data tables. “Of course.”
“I thought I might work here, with you.”
I looked around my room for a good spot. Bed, desk, yards of bare wall. I waved vaguely into the air. “Yes, sure. Sit anywhere.”
He went to the unmade bed and stared down at it like a drill sergeant preparing to ream out a recruit. But he didn’t say anything, just grabbed a corner of the quilt and pulled the coverlet up the bed. Then he slid out of his suit jacket, revealing a white button-up shirt, and hung it on a hook by the night table. I did not recall the existence of this hook. When he reached out, his button-up strained at the shoulders but didn’t tear, thus failing to perform a public service.
I propped my elbow up on the desk and watched him settle onto the bed, his long legs out in front of him and his back against my pillow. I thought about asking him to add a throw pillow into the mix, so his shirt wasn’t on my sheets.
He looked up and caught my eye. “Do you want to sit with me?”
What,on the bed? My mouth went dry, and then watered, and then I choked on my own saliva and coughed unattractively. Sahir sat impassively through this completely wordless and unutterably mortifying ordeal.
